Popularized by books and films like Andersonville, The Great
Escape, and The Hanoi Hilton, and recounted in innumerable postwar
memoirs, the POW story holds a special place in American culture.
Robert Doyle's remarkable study shows why it has retained such
enormous power to move and instruct us. Long after wartime,
memories of captivity haunt former wartime prisoners, their
families, and their society-witness the continuing Vietnam MIA-POW
controversies-and raise fundamental questions about human nature
and survival under inhumane conditions. The prison landscapes have
varied dramatically: Indian villages during the Forest Wars;
floating hulks during the Revolution and War of 1812; slave bagnios
in Algeria and Tripoli; hotels and haciendas during the Mexican
War; large rural camps like Andersonville in the South or converted
federal armories like Elmira in the North; stalags in Germany and
death-ridden tropical camps in the Philippines; frozen jails in
North Korea; and the "Hanoi Hilton" and bamboo prisons of Vietnam.
But, as Doyle demonstrates, the story remains the same. Doyle shows
that, though setting and circumstance may change, POW stories share
a common structure and are driven by similar themes. Capture,
incarceration, isolation, propaganda, torture, capitulation or
resistance, death, spiritual quest, escape, liberation, and
repatriation are recurrent key motifs in these narratives. It is
precisely these elements, Doyle contends, that have made this genre
such a fascinating and enduring literary form. Drawing from a wide
array of sources, including official documents, first-person
accounts, histories, and personal letters, in addition to folklore
and fiction, Doyle illustrates the timelessness of the POW story
and shows why it has become central to our understanding of the
American experience of war.
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